I’ve eaten something that really, really disagreed with me – probably that meatloaf was made from a fundamentalist cow – so the day I’d planned to write flavour went into groaning and feeling sorry for myself, instead. So, no saga this week, sorry, just the unadorned facts. I may come back to the flavour at a later time.

So, this was not such a great session for me. First, I set my alarm clock for 1755 instead of 0555. (Damn all American clocks, anyway! AM, PM, who can possibly keep track?) Anyway, I was an hour late to the session, and discovered that the AI had wasted the 2000 ducats I had carefully saved towards building a bunch of manufactories. It does seem that I got some fortresses, a large navy, and the annexation of Novgorod in exchange, but bah. I’d rather have had the money, and four refineries in 1480.

Well, that was my own silly fault, so I annexed my remaining Russian vassals without grumbling too much. Then I started building towards those manus again. Meanwhile, Ego down in Castile was being aggressive towards Trav’s poor Italy, demanding the handing over of the Canaries. Trav refused; Castile DOWed; England and Burgundy joined Castile. Ouch! Well, that was a clear and present danger to the balance of power. I and Sterk had the same thought simultaneously : Our messages quite literally crossed – “Should we intervene?” “Sterk, you want to intervene in that?” with about two seconds between.

However, Trav was apparently getting the worst not only of the war but also of Ego’s personality. When I asked him to invite me to his alliance, he said “Thanks, but I’m going to quit after this session.” So then I didn’t feel so much like intervening after all. Why bother if he was going to quit? But then it occurred to me that there would be a different Italy player. So I agreed with Sterk and Ear that we would all DOW Burgundy. But because I do not quite trust Sterk, and he does not quite trust me, after that long history of sparring for the Baltic, it was a bit of an issue who would DOW first. The compromise was that Sterk would ask me for mil-access, I would DOW, and then he would DOW. And if he betrayed me, why, he’d at least lose some stab. So I DOWed Burgundy. Ear, my ally, joined. Sterk, the evil, evil bastard, DOWed Hungary. I’m not sure why, but I was not invited to this war. So there I was, fighting Burgundy and England (Castile had sep-peaced an Italian vassal earlier) all on my ownsome.

Nonetheless, most of Burgundy’s armies were burning up Italy, so I crossed the border with 60k and began some sieges. Next I knew, ‘our army in Wurzburg has been destroyed’, and I crashed. Yep, lag had gotten me. I had about 10k cav left when we rehosted. Bit of a disaster, that. I offered Burgundy a WP, but he refused, holding out for Anhalt.

Futile assaults on Magdeburg. In the second screenie, note the 40k men who will receive LT9 in just a few months, and sweep down into Germany crushing all who stand in their way!

Now, a word on techs. At this time Burgundy was at LT 6, and was the most advanced in the Western Alliance. I and Hungary were both closing in on 9. Sterk had already crossed that line, and consequently got quite a bit over-confident, losing some armies to overwhelming cavalry attacks by Ear. Of course, Ear didn’t have anything to spare for the German front, nor can I say I blame him. So what I did was refuse peace, build huge infantry armies behind the cover of my vast AI-built fleet (thank you, AI, you’re a moron but you get things right once in a blue moon) and wait for LT 9. I got it just before we ended the session. And now with the arquebuses, why, we’ll see just who annexes whose German cities, thank you kindly.